Pic Spocket

Our friends Tracy & Craig asked if we could take pictures of baby Cadence as she gets through our first year. Perfect opportunity to take the dust off our camera and lighting equipment (not much used since my focus has been on triathlon). So every couple of months, we do a short photo session. Amazing how fast she grows!

It’s been a small challenge to work with a not-always-cooperating baby and 2 dogs looking for attention and always getting in the way at the wrong time haha! But some pictures are coming out pretty good for home pictures.  Tracy and Craig take care of preparing all the props and backgrounds; we deal with lighting and photos.

Cadence at 1 month…

… at 3 months…

… at 6 months …

… at 9 months …

Larger pictures available in the album here.

The passing of the Mazda 3 was a sad event, but one good thing came out of it: I got decent money for it and could afford a pretty sweet ride! Meet my new triathlon & dog friendly vehicule: 2011 Ford Edge Limited AWD, freshly waxed:

I’ve had it for 2 weeks, and I love it! I was not sure at the beginning because I always had relatively nervous small manual transmission cars and this one definitely did not fit the mold, but it’s really fun to drive around. The 285 HP V6 engine is sufficient to give decent acceleration despite the size of the car. I ended up getting a whole bunch of option I did not wanted, so that I could get the car right away. Otherwise, I had to wait 2 months for a custom order.

I got the 4 wheel drive even if it’s a bit slower and more thirsty, but with the recent accident on the highway, I felt safer going for the AWD version. I am really spoiled: it’s almost fully loaded:

• Leather
• Navigation
• Panoramic roof
• Electric hatch
• Keyless entry
• 10 speaker Sony sound system with IPOD input
• Sync Voice Control
• Remote start
• Driver Memory
• 20″ chrome clad wheels
• back-up camera
• Bluetooth hands free
• etc.

One of my favorite thing turn out to be the panoramic roof, something I originally did not want. It brings a lot of light inside. Can’t wait to open it next summer!

They went all out on the interior electronics… almost too much. The center touch screen controls everything, from audio, to phone, to navigation, to climate control. There’s like 20 functions on the steering wheel alone. The dash is composed of a center analog odometer, surrounded by 2 LCD screen that can be operated from the steering control fto display a bunch of different metrics and control the nav, sound, phone and climate systems.

Sync allows me to control most functions by voice command. Pretty cool too, but with my english accent, reliability is not awesome hehe! The keyless entry is cool too: keys never leave my pocket.. RF chip is used to detect the proximity of the keys, so as soon as I touch the door handle, the car unlocks. Then I can start the engine using the push-button start. The car recognize if it’s my key or Corinne’s key that opened the driver’s door, and then the seat and mirrors automatically adjust to the correct position for the person. Cool!

I did not have the car for more than 2 days before giving it the SBR treatment (Swim Bike Run) hehe!

One thing that will be really helpful next summer for open water swims is the  keypad on the door: I will be able to leave my keys safely locked inside and use the keypad to unclock the car. Better than hiding my keys in a hole on the beach like last year! Sweet!

1000 pixels photos available in the album below.

2011 Ford Edge

The downside of this story is that I am back with car payments, pretty good ones too. Not so much budget for triathlon and cycling related gadgets and toys for the coming years I guess Hopefully I can still afford race registrations and coaching

Tuesday last week, I took a day off to visit the Detroit Auto show. Every year, they organize a photo contest and people that show up on the Tuesday morning with camera equipment can get early access, 2 hours before general opening, which is VERY nice! I had no plans to participate in the contest, but I wanted to browse the show without the crowd hehe!

 Here are a few of my pictures.

All the other pictures are in the album below.

2011 Detroit Auto Show

If only I’d known that 2 days later I would be in need of a new car, my focus would have been a bit different (story to follow inmy next post)…

I went several times to Paris, but I never got the chance to visit the Louvre Museum: the one time I showed up to visit was a Tueday morning in 1997, and it happens that the museum is closed every Tuesday.

About a year ago, I went in this area at night and got some very nice shots of the outside of the museum. Here are a few pictures from last year:

The album from that night visit is available HERE.

This time around, the weather was boring and cold, so a visit to the museum on Sunday morning was perfect to pass time. I headed to the museum for the opening at 9 am using the Metro. The most popular attraction at the museum is  BY FAR the ‘Joconde’ portrait by Leonardo Davinci. The museum was pretty quiet at the opening, so I headed to that area right away to avoid the crowds. They have the protrait behind a glass, which makes it hard to get a good photograph: there a lot of reflections. It’s also the only piece they made you keep a certain distance from. Here a few pictures:

On the opposite wall was this HUGE painting of the ‘Noce de Cana’:

Actually, there was a lot of huge paintings:

Here are some other very nice paintings I encountered along the way…

The museum is just HUGE and it was easy to get temporary lost in it One would need the most part of a week if looking at everything. The building itself is a work of art. Look at the paintings on the cielings here:

Big halls…

I did not have the time to see everything, so I have to make a choice. I decided to look at the egyptian collection since I have never seen anything egyptian other than in pictures before

One of the other most well known pieces of arts there is the famous ‘Venus de Milo’ statue in the greek statue collection.

Among other pieces I found interesting, this engraved plate dating back from 1800 B.C. There was a complete translation of the text below the item. Amazing that people can translate that stuff.

Medieval stained glass

Here is the view from the museum hall, within the glass pyramid.

I am glad I had a good camera with good HIGH ISO performance. This allowed me to have most pictures pretty sharp while keeping the noise to an acceptable level.

Here is the complete album for larger and additional pictures.

Louvre Museum

This article is the third and last part of this serie. (Part I - Part II)

Clearwater Beach benefits from 360 days of sun per year…. That’s right.. no typo here. We could see this first hand since everyday, we had a clear blue sky. Every morning and every evening would bring very colorful sunrises and sunsets. We enjoyed it everyday, but never took time to photograph it.

On our last evening in town, after the race, we made a point to go out on the beach and enjoy our last sunset. I brought the big camera and the flash to get some nice pictures. Here the sun setting, and a nice group picture!

Here is the Turner Family…

Craig took over the camera so that we could have pictures of us as well…

The typical palm tree silhouette pictures… Not bad considering I did not have a tripod with me. There are all hand held.

The colorful sky over the Gulf of Mexico: 

Once we were done and the sky was quite dark, we headed into town to have a good meal. As we were walking on the beach, I could not help but notice this strong image… The silhouette effect of Corinne, Craig pulling the stroller and Tracy carrying the baby against the colorful sky was just awesome. I dropped belly on the beach to get the shot. I think that is one of my favorite this year

More pictures and larger versions at the end of the album below…

Clearwater 2010

Hope you liked these!

See part I for the vacation week.
See part II for the race report.